Let's abolish victimless crimes

IRA GADDY
DM Columnist

Victimless crimes are an issue that's appearing more and more in the news today.

Some people say that victimless crimes are the first step in the formation of a police state. Drug use and suicide are two actions that we have laws against, but upon examination seem to be victimless. Is there a victim?

The answer depends on whether or not you consider society to know what's best for its members. If you believe that the individual is most capable of deciding what is best for him or her, then suicide is victimless. If, however, you believe that society knows more about what is good or bad for each individual, then an individual's actions are measured on that scale and can be criminalized.

The same situation occurs with the issue of drug use. To call drug use a crime, one has to accept that there is something detrimental or automatically bad about taking drugs. If that conclusion is reached, only then is there a victim. Some people might have a hard time imagining any rational, informed person wanting to kill themselves or use an illegal substance. These probably aren't the same people who are 80- years-old and in extreme pain with terminal cancer or 18 and feel closer to music when they smoke a joint. Maybe an individual's nature leads him to be drawn to either of these actions and the individual sees it as a good thing. But for the sake of this argument, let's assume that both suicide and drug use are bad and thus, these actions do create a victim. Now the question becomes, "How do you protect a victim when the law-breaker is the victim?"

Since a crime means that a person committed an act causing harm,and the penalty given to the criminal is either to equalize the harm done to another member of society or to discourage him from doing so again, why give a penalty to a criminal who is also the victim and has already received a penalty and a discouragement? The only way such a law could be useful would be if the people it was applied to were inept at predicting even the simplest of events and relied on the laws governing them to guide them safely into the immediate future. You could argue that this is precisely the situation. This applies to a situation in which a kid who tries heroine is not entirely informed about the consequences would benefit from a law prohibiting the substance is a defensible position. But it is a position that assumes human nature leads us, irrationally, into mistakes. I think this position is itself a mistake.

So far, this discussion has been limited to crimes with the connotation of bad to them. To open the discussion to everyone, let's move to a more generally common irritation -- speeding tickets. This is an excellent example of a victimless crime. Who gets harmed? Where is the victim? The immediate response is that while speeding you are more likely to get into an accident that will cause harm, and thus you are committing a crime. But until you actually have a wreck, no harm is done. While some true accidents do happen (freaks of road design, stroller in the road, whatever), most wrecks are someone's fault. There are laws in place to punish and deter people who cause wrecks. What crime does a speeder commit? Increasing the probability that they will commit a crime? That's like fining someone for thinking about committing suicide. If you get convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, the law is assuming that you can think ahead. But not while you're driving? If laws do work as deterrents, shouldn't one be enough? And what about the people who can safely drive fast on our roads? To take the logic to it's conclusion, imagine Jeff Gordon getting a speeding ticket. Would he really increase his probability of getting in a wreck by speeding? No, because he can drive. Each person is responsible for not causing accidents. That's it. As long as you don't hurt anyone, the manner in which you drive is no one else's business.

What having victimless crimes says is that our society goes slow, not because they fear causing a wreck, but so they won't get a speeding ticket. It says we avoid using heroine not because it might kill us, but because it's illegal. This takes the individual's responsibility away from his or her actions and makes them responsible only to the law. The argument that humans can't take care of themselves is pessimistic totalitarian blather. Our nature doesn't require these kinds of laws. Such laws produce the very behavior they intend to limit. The problem is that people respond to the rules and threats around them. This phenomenon can be seen in the college classroom. Do students study rapt at their class texts because of the infusion of knowledge that will propel them toward their goals? Or do they study because there is a test on certain chosen material and that the grade they receive will ultimately determine their destiny? If you look around, it's predominantly the latter.

What view of an individual's responsibility do we want woven into the fabric of our society? A child is taught to follow the rules around him or her without question and that such a strategy will lead to success in our society. Maybe this is so, but what kind of society will it be? It will be one composed of individuals who don't know why they do anything, who don't look into the consequences -- good or bad -- of their decisions, who are vulnerable outside the prescribed areas of existence and who will make mistakes in whatever bursts of creativity they do achieve from lack of practice.